Towards a smart campus: supporting campus decisions with Internet of Things applications

Abstract

At universities worldwide, creating a ‘smart campus’ is gaining significance. This is a response to the increasingly dynamic use of the campus and the pressure on resources: energy, financial and human resources. The university community has become more mobile, student numbers more unpredictable and funding more uncertain. Consequently, campus strategies focus on resource efficiency and sharing space, requiring investment in management information to improve decision making. The Internet of Things (IoT) can help to provide big data about use patterns: by collecting real-time data on space utilization, users can make better use of current spaces and real estate managers can make better decisions about long-term demand. Furthermore, space utilisation data can be complemented with user feedback data and environmental variables, e.g. noise levels, luminance. In this research we identify the capabilities of existing IoT applications through a literature study. Literature also suggests that information from IoT applications is not utilized in organisational decision-making processes. Through four case studies we analyse these decision-making processes and identify the process-level requirements to make strategic decisions in campus management. Then we show how information from the IoT can be directly connected to these processes, thus providing a valuable addition of real-time data as input.